✅ AI in corporate comms and public relations: The story so far - get our report
New Wadds Inc. paper launched at ProCom Day 2024, Helsinki
I attended ProCom Day 2024, the annual meeting of the Finnish Association of Communications Professionals in Helsinki yesterday.
The focus of the day was the impact of AI on practice and its future impact on society and professional work. I’m privileged to have been invited to join the session and present a keynote on the international perspective.
We published a new management paper, The Use of AI in Corporate Communications and Public Relations: The Story So Far, to coincide with ProCom Day. The report has been in the works for a couple of months, but it seemed appropriate to publish it during a visit to the media literacy capital of the world.
The report calls peak hype for AI in public relations.
It tells the story of a community of practice challenged with mapping skills and workflow onto AI tools, addressing significant governance challenges and figuring out how to deploy the technology to deliver the promise of efficiency and effectiveness.
There’s also the issue that much AI work isn’t very good. It forgets, makes stuff up, and makes mistakes, and the copy it generates is generally poor quality. AI is perhaps a lot more human than any of us realise.
These issues will all be figured out, but it will take much longer than AI vendors would have us believe. Its deployment in existing enterprise applications will act as a significant accelerant.
It’s too early to predict the long-term impact of AI on corporate communications and public relations roles.
My bet is that you'll be in trouble within five to ten years if you view organisations from a media perspective. In contrast, you're on safer ground if you view organisations from a relationship perspective.
We’d also caution against the view that AI will replace tactical roles before it impacts management. It is arguably already much better at some management tasks such as abstraction, decision-making, modelling and research.
Please download a copy of our report and let us know what you think. And if we can help you with any of the issues it raises, please hit reply.
Have a great weekend. We’ll be back with the regular newsletter on Monday.
All the best,
Stephen